Miscellaneous Knowledge

Update: I’m no longer recommending Google Checkout after they raised their fees to be equal to that of PayPal. Google’s only real advantage was their low transaction rates, now that it’s at parity it does not make sense to continue using them. See here for more information. I leave the article below for referrence on what was once a great service.

Customers of my game server business may have recently noticed that we’ve added a new payment method, Google Checkout. There have been many reasons driving this, both ones that benefit customers and me.

First of all, from the customer side, Google Checkout is much simpler to use and offers a lot more control over payment history. We’ve had a few customers who have had a bad experience with PayPal and refused to use it. However, unlike PayPal, Google Checkout can only accept a Credit/Debit card as a funding source, so you can’t pay using existing funds or a bank account. However, we found that most people used a Credit or Debit card anyway.

On our side however, it’s even better. While we have to hand-process each order (charging the card etc) the way is done is very good. Plus, we also get a lot more control over the order and like it is for the user side, the history is excellent. There is also the added benefit of having the Google Checkout badge on your AdSense results, which helps make your ad stand out.

One major factor that many might consider is fees. PayPal’s base rate is 0.25p + 4%. This can quickly mount up, with a £24 payment having over £1 in fees, and if you have micropayments it gets even worse. Google Checkout however has 0.15p + 1.5%, faw lower. It doesn’t stop there however, if you advertise using their AdWords service you get £10 worth of sales processed for free for every £1 in advertising you spend. So say you spend £10 on AdWords a month, that gives you £100 of sales processed for free (note: not £100 worth of fees). So the savings are even greater! (More lower prices I can pass on to users)

Perhaps the most interesting bit for us however is that payments are initated to our bank account daily. Unlike PayPal, where you have to get £50 first before you can withdraw. That’s upto £50 that you are not earning interest on and is completely under PayPal’s control.

I will however keep offering PayPal, while Google Checkout is far better when you compare it it has the disadvantage of being unfamiliar to users and not supporting Bank Account funding, so as not to alienate parts of my userbase i’m running both but recommending Google Checkout.

Update: Got an email the other day from Google saying that I didn’t qualify to have the Google Checkout badge on my AdWords adverts. Apparently, they couldn’t find the badge, so they must just quickly check through. I emailed them back and they checked again and found it (you have to fill out an order form). While the AdWords badge isn’t particually important, it helps you stand out from competitors.

I recently got talking with someone about Paid to Click (PTC) schemes. These have been around since the early days of the internet- the concept being that you are paid to click on links and view websites, simple right? you’ll be earning money like no tomorrow.

Or not. It is possible to make money from PTC, and i’ll go into that later. However, for the most part, you’ll be earning small cash and wasting a lot of time. Mostly, there is a minimum view time requirement and you have to enter spambot-style picture codes to prove that you’re not a robot. At best, you’ll be earning $10 a month for a couple of hours work, even burger flippers earn more!

There are 2 ways to make money in PTC, the secret being to get someone else to do the work for you, i’m talking about referrals. Almost every PTC scheme has a referral program, you get a percentage of your referral’s earnings, and some even go down several levels. So, you can potentially earn money for doing nothing, get a few referrals and let them click away, and encourage them in turn to refer users. Now, this isn’t simple, but there are systems out there to help you. Forums such as Get Paid Forum have threads where you join using the referrer’s address above you, then post your own and people sign up under you and so on, this is a great way to start building your referral tree. From then on, it’s your own responsibility to get people to sign up under you, think of a few innovative ways to get people to do things for you.

Personally, I gave up on PTC, building a referral tree isn’t easy and while I was getting paid, it was peanuts, especially when those referrals under me also gave up and the money stopped coming in. Sure, I could have got more, but it was more work than I was prepared to do. I might retry it though, talking to this person has made me think about trying PTC again and test a few ideas i’ve got floating around to get lots of referrals.

There is however one “get paid for doing nothing on the internet” scheme that’s done well for me, and also has a minimum of effort. It’s the Gomez Peer, the concept is that you get paid for running a program on your computer. If the alarm bells are ringing at this point, turn them off. It’s not spyware, adware nor does it impact your system performance. The company that makes Gomez Peer, Gomez, are a large website testing service. They test the websites of big companies such as Microsoft, Google etc to see how they perform from many different internet connection types all over the world. While Gomez could buy computers and situate them around the world, it makes much more sense for them to get real people to do this and give them a little bit of money, Gomez saves money and people earn some, not bad I say.

So, if you want to try it out, click here to sign up. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be asked to download the program, it’s 20mb. Once installed, it will start testing websites. You will not earn money until Gomez “approves” your account. This takes around 1-2 weeks, they use this period to see how committed you are going to be, they see how long your PC is on and when and if it matches their ideals, you’ll be accepted and start getting paid. I get paid around $10 per month just for running the program, plus in June they are going to start paying people 60% more – excellent. You can install the program on multiple programs to help increase your earnings.

So, if you want to make money for nothing, I strongly recommend the Gomez Peer. It might take time for them to approve your account, but they’ve always paid me on time and the right amount, plus i’ve done no work to earn it! Not bad at all I say. Also, they have quite a few methods of paying you, including PayPal.

And if you want proof, have a look below. This is screenshot form the account section of Gomez. As you can see, so far i’ve got $56.41 out of them, for doing nothing. I’d also post the PayPal payment as proof, but I can’t find it, next time I get paid I will update this post with the proof.

Gomez Peer Lifetime Earnings

(Oh, all the links in this post are referral links in case you didn’t notice. If you sign up for Gomez Peer and get accepted, I get $1. If you don’t want to give me this (doesn’t cost you anything remember) then simply remove the referrer bit from the URL)